1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid container configured to store liquid in the interior thereof, and a technology to detect presence and absence of liquid in the interior of the liquid container.
2. Related Art
Examples of known liquid consuming apparatus include so-called an ink jet printer configured to print an image or the like by ejecting liquid such as ink from an ejection head is known. The liquid ejected from the ejection head is stored in a specific liquid container such as an ink cartridge, and the liquid is supplied from the liquid container to the ejection head. The liquid container is generally configured to be demountably mounted with respect to a liquid consuming apparatus so as to be replaced with a new liquid container when the liquid in the interior is used up.
As the liquid container as described above, a configuration in which a detection system configured to detect the fact that the liquid in the interior is used up is proposed (for example, JP-A-2007-307894). The liquid container disclosed in JP-A-2007-307894 includes a piezoelectric detecting unit configured to detect vibrations which vary with the remaining amount of the liquid in a liquid detecting chamber communicating with the liquid storage portion. Since the detecting system is mounted on the liquid container itself, the fact that the liquid in the interior thereof is used up is immediately detected.
A variety of detecting systems configured to detect the fact that the liquid is used up are proposed. For example, a detecting system having a sub tank body formed partly of a deformable member and a sensor (photo sensor) configured to detect the displacement of the plate member which follows the deformation of the deformable member is proposed (JP-A-2007-136807). When the liquid is consumed and the interior of the sub tank is brought into a negative pressure, the deformable member is sucked into the sub tank. Therefore by detecting the displacement with the sensor, the fact that the liquid is used up can be detected simply with high degree of accuracy.
However, in the case of the configuration in which the piezoelectric detection unit configured to detect the vibrations which vary with the remaining amount of the liquid in the liquid detecting chamber communicating with the liquid storage portion as in JP-A-2007-307894, since the piezoelectric detecting unit is used, wiring for output a signal from the piezoelectric detecting unit is required, so that there arises a problem that the structure of the liquid container becomes complicated. In contrast, although the detecting system configured to detect the presence or absence of the liquid in the sub tank without using the above-described piezoelectric detecting unit is proposed in JP-A-2007-136807, a detailed configuration for a case of being mounted on the liquid container having a liquid detection chamber communicating with the liquid storage portion is not proposed.